yesterday i met a girl in a course. she told me that she's trying to do her MA after the 5th semester. she's "hurrying" because she wants back in her job, in tourism industry, earning money. She said to earn more money she had to study; she has chosen ethnology because it's so easy and no demand at all; she's interested in ohter people and their way of living. In her opinion ethnology is not necessary as a institution at university at all. For her the people who are interesting for ethnogists died out anyway.....I ask YOU now: do you think she understands what she is studying? should she take a degree in ehtnology? what's your opinion? i think that she knows a lot what the ethnography sais, but she does not understand..... and i think she's a shame for the subject.....

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I was recently arguing about the United States and their lack of a long term history, which distinguishes them from other states and ethnic groups. But I have to start from the beginning of my thought. There's a term in anthropology, "invention of tradition" which was introduced twenty or thirty years ago and describes the fact, that in many states tradition and history was "invented". For example, the idea of the Indian caste was a concept build in colonial India by the British, but the society stated it to be older (correct me if I am wrong with this example)(1)(The first book dealing with this idea was Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T (Eds.): The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1983) . First of all, this invention of tradition, or at least its constant redefinition, is not only bad. It could enable communities to change themselves, without "officially" changing its values. Change without a revolution. In many ethnic groups we have those kind of movements, with refer to a time so far away, not exactly being present in the common memory of a society anymore. Its so far away that the community could interpret and define those traditions in a new way, while still keeping the basic ideas of its self identity. My argument now was this. The United States lack this kind of "old enough history". Or in other words, the one they have, is not suitable for most Americans. And because of that their own steady definition of "itself" as a nation is not able to rely on this "old enough history". They have to define themselves by defining "the other". But this definition of the self by the outer world instead of the inner world probably is one source for the constant confrontation with other states. Well, this was my argument. Now, as I wrote it down, it seems rather simplifying. But maybe it has still a true point. Another question I have is if I borrowed this argument from another debate. Is this a common claim, that the Americans have to define themselves by the "other" because of their lack of free interpretable, "old enough history"?

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I was just thinking about the proper translation of the phrase "Selbstbild und Fremdbild", which is a very often used word in german anthropology and means self perception and perception of the other. Is there a shorter translation for "Fremdbild"? I read the word "alter perception", but I don`t know if it fits here.

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The largest german tabloid is diving into anthropological fields today by asking if the enduring heat in germany will make us all to africans (click image to enlarge). It think the theory nearest to this would be cultural materialism, or maybe also social darwinism, which connects natural settings with the cultural adaption to it. Everyone knows that africa is like africa because of the heat. They are completely determined by this basic setting. Take their clothes for example, they like it colorful to reflect the sun (white would get dirty too fast). They eat insects because its too hot to grow wheat or apples. And of course, all the dances throughout africa can be explained by the metereological circumstances: They dance for their gods, that they make rain, or at least less heat. Every child knows.

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I found that information page about the UN acts against terrorism in the web at www.un.org/terrorism/ - and i was appalled about the colours the UN is using to symbolize their fight against "the international terrorism". Actually it looks more like a home-made unprofessional page. But the information you can find there are helpfull if you are interested in news and developments, resolutions, conventions and declarations of the UN and their forces.

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Does anyone know what it means if pages of a citation are in brackets, like in this citation: Böhr: Der Besuch von Feuerländern am Bord S.M.S. Hansa. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Verhandlungen); Bd. XIII, S. (30)-(31). Berlin 1881. Nothing important, I am just curious.

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Is the american government trying to tighten control over latin america while making believe, the leftist indigenus movements are a possible source for terrorism? At least this muslim news site is reporting about that: "Washington’s plan is to "economically and militarily wipe out the social and indigenous movements in order to obtain their resources and territories," says Bolivian Congressman Evo Morales, echoing a view popular in the region. "The undercurrent of these plans is the same program as has been going on for the last 500 years—the eradication of our indigenous cultures," he said."

Or are just the muslim forces in latin america trying to use the already present antiamericanism to force their presence in this part of the world?

Anyway, a interesting struggle between different cultures and religions. Has anybody more information or thoughts?

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Just read an old interview from the year 97, in which Pattie Maes one of the leading artificial life researchers talked about the impact of personal software agents on the way we view our world: Interviewer: "It occurs to me that in contrast to processes like browsing in a library or on the Web, which expose you to new ideas, systems like Firefly give users data that's very narrow in scope. Will people's horizons be narrowed if they rely on personal agents?" Maes: "This is a very valid concern, but one which can be dealt with through good user interface design. If an agent only gives you what you like or what you ask for, then your view of the world will become more and more narrow. It's important to integrate the agent interface into a direct manipulation interface, or to integrate agent recommendations within an existing system where the user can also browse...."

But existing popular search engines like google dont interact with me. You can tell google a thousand times that the result of the query is quite interesting but you although would like to hear some other point of view . Google will ignore you and so step by step all people get google's opinion.So don't get me wrong, Ithink the web is a great invention but isnt it also narrowing our view? P.S.: the interview with Pattie Maes is available here.

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The colleagues from the University Trier put a link to the ethno::log from their site. Many thanks for that! Interesting: They filed us under the section "Polpularizing Anthropology". It make me think about this site, it's a totally new view. On one hand, this is really "popular" anthropology, as we collect information in a fairly high amount from popular sources. On the other hand, the intention was not to write for the popular masses. But if I look at our visitors, we have a lot non-scientists as readers. So, in fact, we maybe are popularizing anthropology, which isn't something bad. But mainly we don't carry information from the inside of anthropology to the masses. This is sad, but it's due to anthropology is not happening in the internet. So, aren't we popularizing anthropology? Anyway, main score of this page is to collect all interesting things from anthropology in the internet. Scientific or not, this doesn't care. It's always good to know what's going on, and the news sources of the internet can deliver a lot of actual information about the regions which are of high interest for anthropology.

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In the SZ of the 18th decembre on the feature pages a very interesting article presents the "biggest German Ethnoportal", called "Vaybee!". That's a electronic platform for mostly young turkish people who live in Germany. Curosily it's only a homepage for travelling and partnership, but it shows the cut between the traditional turkish culture and the life young Turkish wanna live or real live in western societies. But it show also the internet as an example for a platform and a solution for such problems. The newspaper-article complete the view and interprete the concept and the realisation of the homepage. If you wanna have the article please contact.

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The server, on which this is currently running, is free of charge and without advertisement. But the volunteers doing this just for the use and fun of the world's internet population need to install a new server and asked for donations. We will benefit by having a faster page again. Any ideas how the Ethno::log can contribute? Are there any readers out there willing to pay a very little amount (about 1 Euro)?

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In the last days I was discovering a little mistake in my (and others?) concept of Cyberethnology: As I know, researchers were always or often thinking about internet culture as a new culture, which has differences to offline cultures. For example, you compare commodification in online games to commodification in real markets, and discover similarities and differences (see also older story). Or a fellow student at our institute does research about democracy in the internet compared to the offline world, another one about ethnical conflicts in the internet (also with comparing or measuring it to the offline world). But taking internet culture serious means, that we are always aware that it's nearly as complex as the offline world and that there are really huge differences inside the internet. I mean, the differences of it to the offline world are really obvious and most of them (definitely not all!) are most likely based only on the technical difference, not in the cultural. The cultural interesting thing rather is: How are the differnces inside? As "inside" the technical difference is lesser. So taking internet culture serious means, that we are aware, that the internet is a own social space with it's own rules, of course affected by the offline world, but meanwhile maybe more affected by itself. So, what I would do to understand the internet, will rather be comparing different internet cultures. For example, commodification in one online game community compared to another (ok, this is stupid as it's most likely influenced by the game programing code). Another example: Comparing forum tradition and use and habits of one community to another. Intuitive I would guess, this would be more interesting as comparing it to offline communication of communities. Of course, this means not that comparing to the offline world is senseless. I think, at the moment it's only less interesting. Comparing to offline worlds is necessary for adapting our theorys. But then - as researches interested in culture - we should look at the different cultures inside the internet space.

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